By the time Willy and the Poor Boys arrived in late 1969, Creedence were operating at a pace that now looks impossible: it was their third album of that single year. The hurry never showed in the songs.

The record leans into the band’s roots-music side, jug-band stomps and front-porch looseness sitting next to some of the hardest-hitting writing John Fogerty ever put to tape. It opens with a song about a kid making music on a street corner and closes the loop on the idea of the everyman, the poor boys of the title, the ones outside the rooms where decisions get made.

And tucked into all that warmth is its sharpest blade: a two-minute protest song that has been misread for half a century. The album is friendly on the surface. Underneath, it is keeping a close eye on who pays and who does not.